


novo orizen

by theproseofnight



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergent, F/F, canon lite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:46:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26736100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theproseofnight/pseuds/theproseofnight
Summary: The spectre of war has been faint for some time after the quelling of rising nations and the mending of disquiet hearts, yet for one more night, rest is out of Lexa’s reach. Clarke has things on her mind.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 21
Kudos: 193





	novo orizen

**Author's Note:**

> This has been collecting dust in my docs for nearly two years. So, forgive the moths and cobwebs collected along the way.

*******

**tomorrow**

**—**

“Are you awake?”

“No.”

“Lexa?”  
  
“Rid op, Clarke.”  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
Rest is often a luxury for someone of her station.

Tonight, it is far out of reach.

The bed shifts. A series of deep sighs follows. The rustling of the last twenty minutes continues as Lexa feels the furs displaced once more by micro movements while her bedmate attempts to get comfortable—a comfort that is, apparently, also unattainable. 

“Try,” she mumbles. Sleep sits heavy on her eyelids and exhaustion clings to her limbs from another long day of training.

She pushes gently back against the soft body behind her and takes a hand to link their fingers over her chest. Clarke hums, snuggling closer.

Quiet minutes pass. Lexa hopes sharing her warmth helps to get them sooner to sleep.

“Lexa?”

It does not.

She tries to ignore the loud whisper.

“Legs kom Trikru.”  
  
Nothing good ever comes from Clarke weaponising her full name and place of origin; worse when her given name is replaced with Clarke’s favourite body part of hers. 

“Heda of the Thirteen Pouts.”

Or when her title is co-opted.

Lexa fights her laughter. It is so easy to give in to Clarke’s brightness but, calling on the strength of past commanders, she does not crack a smile nor open her eyes; pretending instead to snore, deliberately altering her breathing and injecting the occasional snort to cover her amusement. Her efforts don’t track far, they never do when it comes to Wanheda, feeling a pinch to her ribs.

“Commander of Ten Thousand Candles.”

The spectre of war has been faint for some time after the quelling of rising nations and the mending of disquiet hearts, yet it would appear, at least for one more night, Lexa’s search for slumber battles on.

When Clarke lets go of her hand only to rest it under her night shirt and start a tapping motion of uneven rhythm over her abdominal muscles, Lexa finally gives up all pretenses. She smiles fondly into the familiar touch. A hard-earned development, contentment finds regular residence these days in the corner of her lips, despite this recent nightly routine of disruption. The late hour wakeup calls tread a line between endeared and exasperated, but there is little wanting or complaining when such feathered intimacy constitutes their newfound happiness—years in the making. The immense privilege of Clarke’s constancy by her side is not something she thought imaginable two wars ago, especially not with the tumult that had first brought Clarke to her in the midst of clan upheaval.

Her smile widens feeling a poke in her lower back and a gentle shake of her shoulder. For all her Heda training, Lexa’s steely discipline evaporates when her skaifaya insists on burning brightly.

Lexa squeezes Clarke’s hand. “Shall I ask the guards for more pillows?” She ventures, even if the fowl count or insufficient extravagance of their silk bedding is not likely to be the source of Clarke’s murmuring discontent.

A stretch of silence follows a muffled ‘No’. Lexa waits, knowing better than to accept that as the final answer. The ticking of the clock keeps her in suspense for when, inevitably, Clarke will speak again. A lot has been on her mind. Clarke’s latest fixation has been on inventory, the store of grains from the markets surplus, keeping Lexa up at night with questions about the variety and availability of goods, along with impassioned proposals for increasing security to trading routes. Odd, considering Clarke has rarely expressed an interest in the practicalities of trade; concern over keeping their people fed, yes, but not the technical logistics. Lexa wonders if month-end accounting is the culprit again behind tonight’s bout of insomnia.

“What if I hadn’t fallen from the sky?” 

Ah, the stars, another preoccupation.

“Then you would not be keeping me awake before son op.”

Lexa teases. Clarke ignores it. A familiar dance.

“Or what if my pod had landed somewhere else? Like Kansas? Would there be a yellow brick road for me to follow?”  
  
Lexa does not know of this Kansas nor has she ever crossed paths with yellow bricks on a road but by the underlying anxiety and existential nature (and strangeness) of the questions, she reluctantly accepts that sleep will not come until her skaigirl’s restlessness is addressed head-on. She turns to find a pensive Clarke—a mess of yellow hair with a crease firmly in place between two golden brows reminding Lexa of a grumpy lion—looking at her expectantly.

She sweeps the hair back behind Clarke’s ear and cards fingers through the wildness until it is something manageable. At Clarke’s purring, Lexa refrains from voicing her thought, _adorable_ , resisting applying the same Skai adjective that Clarke liberally uses to habitually disparage her character. Whenever the kitchens would run low on orange tarts or the market stalls out of beeswax or any such similar inventory crises, Clarke would quip about the ostensible cuteness of Lexa’s mercurial temperament.

(“Are we sour today because someone didn’t get her daily citrus intake? _Adorable_.”

“Heda is not adorable.”

“If only the ambassadors knew that nothing pricks the ire of the Commander more than the threat to her beloved candles. _Adorable_.”)

Lexa was last met with a withering glare and a cold bed in her effort to reciprocate the term of endearment when Clarke had fallen victim to the sting of poison ivy while relieving herself afield during a hunting expedition—learning the hard way that ‘adorable’ cannot be equated to Lexa rubbing Clarke’s ass with ointment.

(“It is NOT adorable, Lexa, that my ass is on fire.”)

It’s the same lioness brooding that faces her now. Lexa tempers her amusement to take in the cerulean blue of Clarke’s eyes, somehow still luminescent in the pitch of dark.

“Niron, beja,” she starts as she smooths out the furrow then gently traces the outline of downturned lips, “my deepest gratitude if you could so kindly collect all your skyling ruminations and save them for after we break fast. The sky will still hang tomorrow.”

Lexa must be entering the deep stages of fatigue, her speech patterns taking on a formality reminiscent of the language lessons of her Trikru upbringing. As keepers of the forest and producers of all the lands parchment, her clan values the ability to wield a pen to the same degree as wielding a sword, holding the pursuit of knowledge in equal standing to the pursuit of paunas. Telling Clarke over a bedtime story one night, as part of their training young Trikru transcribe old world texts, excavated from a bomb recovery site (the Library con Gress), strengthening both mind and body by the same measure. At dusk, she had to push past her physical exhaustion at the end of swordplay to unpack the grammatical and semantic nuances of Gonasleng. Drool often found its way onto Sun Tsu’s military treatise or any other number of warfare literature. 

(In her later years, a closely held secret, Lexa would find escape in fictions of the romantic variety, when her days were bruising and softness was a necessary balm. She was Heda of the Trikru book club long before Heda of the coalition.) 

It became an unconscious habit to fall back on the strictures of her scholarship when she tired.

“But what if my dad hadn’t discovered the ship’s depleting oxygen supply and I was never floated?” Clarke asks, steamrolling on, breaking Lexa out of her thoughts. “What if I hadn’t come to the ground? We would never have met.”

Lexa is confused by the trajectory and usefulness of Clarke’s queries. “Why do you wish to revisit the past at this hour, niron? And with imaginaries with a paucity of materialising?”

Clarke harrumphs. The crease of her forehead deepens. A reprimanding light shove of Lexa’s shoulder follows.

“It’s late, Lex. Can you please talk normal people speak? Not all of us are Scrabble champions.”

Lexa’s chest swells with pride at Clarke’s reference to the word game of wooden tiles she has repeatedly, easily, won after it was introduced to the nightbloods by Clarke’s childhood friend, Wells. She delighted in having a vocabulary more advanced than most of the Skaikru, who had falsely assumed the grounders to be illiterate.

“ _Paucity_ : from Latin paucitas, ‘few.’ The presence of something in such small or insufficient quantities or amounts as to render it insignificant,” Lexa recites mechanically as if Clarke was her Gonasleng tutor, the definition pouring forth before the slap of ruler could meet her wrist. “ _Imaginary_ : something that only exists in the mind—” 

The slap does come anyway, more sound than force, as Clarke’s hand strikes her stomach. Where Lexa gets more wordy at the edges of fatigue, Clarke becomes more violent. “I _know_ what imagination is. But what do you mean?”

“Why question what already _is_ with what may never _be_?” Lexa mutters half philosophically, half drowsily around a yawn. 

“Ugh.”

The answer doesn’t satisfy Clarke, who looks at her as if Lexa was speaking another language. 

“We will travel to _checkin_ with your mother shortly.” Lexa hesitates, unsure of her correct usage, the term not quite rolling off her tongue. Nonetheless, the long journey seems a more convenient time for celestial discourse. “Could we throne this until then?”

Another language hurdle. The words sound strange in her mouth but it’s something new Lexa is trying; to integrate the curious patter of Skaikru’s peculiar dialect into her speech. She had first heard the odd phrasing during early visits to Arkadia, the repeated requests to furniture (chair or table) a council meeting debate for a future date. It was a curious—and by all accounts unproductive—practice given how much seating and horizontal surfaces would be missing from the room with how often Clarke’s people wanted to put things off, notwithstanding that many Skaikru discussions rarely return to the same furnishings.

Nonetheless, in an effort to close the linguistic gap between them, Lexa tries. Since Clarke has made tremendous headway with Trigedasleng in the seasons following Arkadia’s resettlement and expansion into neighbouring territories to become Orizen—fluent enough to conduct the majority of her healer consultations in her adopted tongue—Lexa returns the favour when she can, reproducing the foreigners’ unique flow in stilted but earnest attempts. 

“I don’t think your throne is large enough,” Clarke replies, a mumbled protest, but accepts the motion for delay while continuing to gnaw her bottom lip.

Concerned over the needless damage that anxious teeth are causing, Lexa tips forward to kiss away the worry and prevent further bruising. She swipes a tongue to soothe the dull pain, parts Clarke’s lips and then dips inside. Clarke whimpers, instantly opening up to receive her. 

They kiss languidly, happily.

Clarke tastes like the late harvest grapes Lexa had idly fed her while they lounged on the chaise after supper. Ever since discovering that Clarke enjoys the berries that have been left on the vine longer than usual, naturally dehydrated for extra sweetness, plates of the fruit abound and have become a hallmark of their post-meal leisure routine. As Lexa catches up with clan paperwork, Clarke would sketch, stretched in repose with her head on Lexa’s lap, periodically opening her mouth in silent ask for the fruit.

This is another new thing Lexa has been trying; to be more present in their domestic life and shoulder less of the day-to-day running of a civilisation, delegating the monotonous administrative tasks to her capable staff. Rather than entering their bedchamber by candlelight depleted of energy from arbitrating petty clan squabbles, she now limits her executive involvement to double checking the day’s records and providing her seal of approval, leaving her evenings more free to pursue a different sort of tedium—time better spent stroking golden strands and paying attention to soft skin and crimson lips.

The same lips that have started to move harder against hers, the kiss progressing to pull moans out of them with each intense slide of tongue. Lexa simply lets Clarke feel her way through her emotions, happy to let her dictate the terms of this form of trade.

The length of their courtship has done nothing to lessen the fervency of butterflies when Clarke kisses her. Full and immense. Like drinking in the haze of summer’s twilight, Lexa feels as intoxicated by the sweeping warmth now as during those afternoons spent meandering the fields of wildflowers that edge the outcrops of Polis, when their love was blossoming and she was keen to impress with the beauty of her land. Here as then, the monarchs take flight with the way Clarke’s whole body folds into and sways with Lexa when mouths and tongue connect. Lexa doesn’t think she will ever outgrow the taste of Clarke and this honeyed feel of home and possibility.

The tenor shifts when Clarke quietly confesses after they pull apart, breaths heavy and foreheads resting against each other, “What if I hadn’t arrived in time?”  
  
The direction of the conversation finally becomes clear to Lexa.

“I am safe,” she is quick to reassure, sensing the root cause of Clarke’s distress and wanting to abate rising panic. “I’m here, hodnes.”  
  
“I know,” Clarke says. She puts a few millimetres of distance between them, lowering her head to hide the tremble in her lower lip. “I can’t help thinking … ”

“I am well, Clarke,” Lexa reiterates, cutting her off and tipping Clarke’s chin to re-meet her gaze.

Glassy blue eyes shine back at her that breaks Lexa’s heart, a reminder of what Clarke had endured. What they have survived together.

“But what if—”

“There are no ifs.” Lexa quashes any doubt. “I am healed and no longer broken.”

She leaves the double meaning hanging between them as she traces the curve of Clarke’s lips with her thumb while returning to stroke her hair.

A moment passes before Clarke speaks again, “After our first date, you gifted me with land.” 

Accustomed to her non-sequiturs, Lexa flows easily with the abrupt change of conversation, and without skipping a beat, affirms, “Yes, I planted a tree in your honour. A Trikru tradition between intendeds.”

Clarke raises a chastising eyebrow at her economic summation of the significance.

Lexa shrugs, “We had an enjoyable lunch. You taught me the meaning of horizon,” an unfamiliar Gonasleng word but a well-versed Trigedasleng concept that she had not considered beyond it being the wan line below which the sun sinks and warriors disappear. Lexa averts Clarke’s gaze, feeling an oncoming blush. “I found your interpretation of it, as where ground and sky touch, to be affecting and deeply hopeful. Poetic. Some dirt and branches pale in comparison.”

“Lexa, it wasn’t _just_ one tree,” Clarke underscores and looks at her incredulous as if Arkadia’s renaming and present agricultural wealth hadn’t derived from Lexa’s excessive wooing practice.

“One or a thousand. I would give you what I have,” Lexa says quietly though she does make eye contact this time.

(She doesn’t bother to belabour the point that the redistribution of lands among the clans was by then already in the making as part of the Ogonzaun Treaty; Clarke had been its most vocal advocate for fair and equitable trade of knowledge, skills, and natural resources. Nor is Lexa willing to confess to the elation she felt when her personal motivations fortuitously coincided with political ones.)

“Things could have turned out so differently,” Clarke ruefully speculates.

With one sentence they round back to her mulling about the unpredictability, uncertainty, of time’s passage. Lexa smiles at the dependable circularity of Clarke’s pillow talk.

“Diyo laik chit emo laik, hodnes. _Things are what they are_ ,” she whispers, softly caressing Clarke’s face.

“What if they don’t stay that way? I’m scared of what tomorrow brings.”

The edge of fear in Clarke’s voice breaks through the last of her fog and has Lexa entirely alert now. Perhaps another bedtime story will help settle Clarke’s heart. She moves to sit up, at the same time removing both their shifts, then shuffles back to settle against the ornate headboard. Through unspoken coordination Clarke adjusts until her legs are draped over Lexa’s lap, body leaned sideways into Lexa’s chest with her head tucked under her chin. Cradled as such, without a clothing barrier between them, the skin to skin contact provides momentary comfort. Lexa temporarily forgets her next words, getting lost in the intimate feel of Clarke against her, the minute expels of breath against her skin, as Clarke resettles the furs to cover half of their bare torsos.

“When I was a goufa, I had very little concept of tomorrow,” Lexa picks up the thread again once Clarke begins to finger-draw patterns over her breastbone, alighting a trail of goosebumps.

“Before hearing my calling, I would spend my days in the forest, after my chores and studies were completed, of course.”  
  
“Of course,” Clarke parrots. Lexa feels her teasing smile against her neck more than sees it.  
  
“Nomon and Nontu had worried that they would lose me to the unknown creatures and lurking dangers. But every time I returned unharmed and with a brighter spirit than when I had entered the dense copses behind our village, they let me be. Some scrapes and a healthy layer of dirt but nothing permanently worrisome.”  
  
“You never told me this.”  
  
“ _Sha_ , few others know. It adds to the mystique of the Commander if knowledge of her branwoda ways is limited.” Lexa chuckles and kisses the top of Clarke’s head before continuing with her story, “One day, I was perhaps six summers, I had overestimated my familiarity with the forest and underestimated the length of daylight at the turn of seasons.” Too mesmerised by the crunch of leaves beneath her feet and absorbed in the changing colours around her, Lexa tells, she had travelled deeper in amongst the trees than ever before. By the time she realised the error of her youth, the sun had already made its final descent and Lexa could no longer distinguish flora from fauna.

Clarke looks up at her, concern in her eyes, and scans Lexa’s face for any tell-tale signs of residual childhood trauma, but doesn’t interrupt, kissing her chin to prompt her to go on.

“After going in fruitless circles trying to retrace my path, I made myself a bed of leaves beside two large rocks near the base of a tree. I layed down, tired and hungry, hoping that tomorrow would come soon but not knowing when that would be.”

“Weren’t you scared?”

Lexa shakes her head. “I didn’t know to be scared. The woods had become part of my identity, I never thought of them as my foe.”

Clarke chuckles and does interrupt at this to comment, “Lexa Woods. I like it.”

“Clarke, you must know by now what Trikru means?” Lexa reminds, tsking. Then with a proud lift of her chin, she discloses, “In any case, I had my wooden bow and arrow with me. I felt invincible.”

“Awww what happened next? Did little Leksa fight off a pauna and that’s where the Commander’s legend started?”

Lexa shakes her head again, smiling at Clarke’s imagination. “Nothing quite so dramatic. I fell asleep thinking of the blueberry tart that I would make with Nomon when I return. But, when I woke up at first light, it was to the feeling of an unexpected soft weight on me. Sometime during the night, a fawnling had found my temporary housing and deemed it a suitable place to rest. Perhaps she was also lost. I’m not sure, but it appeared we kept each other safe and warm.”

“Fawnling?”

Lexa nods. “A baby deer.”

“A fawnling and a child? You would have been a prime target for a pauna,” Clarke says, alarmed by their open vulnerability.

“In hindsight, yes. But the spirits were with us that day. We became fast friends and I would often roam the forest with her in the days after. She grew to thrice my size but never left me.”

Clarke’s eyes shine with affection. “Why does it not surprise me that your best friend would be four legged rather than human.”

The doe might have been a stray caribou, separated from her herd, Lexa thinks. Her features were characteristic of the deer Lexa would come across in her later travels to Ice Nation territory.

“I named her Soncha, light. She was the whitest of fawns I had set eyes on then or since—I have always associated her with the first morning light. In any case, my overnight adventure got me into a lot of trouble with Nomon and Nontu.”

“I bet.”

“I told them that I had Soncha the whole time, which made them less upset. They thought I had mixed up my nouns and meant faya.”

Clarke gives her a fond smile, one that she returns more watery, emotion surfacing more than expected.

“She was special. It’s rare for does to bear antlers. 1 in 10,000 I learned. By the first yearling, she had grown them, to my surprise.”

“The antlers on your throne?” Clarke gasps, making a connection.

Lexa shakes her head. “Not Soncha’s. But they do honour her.”

Her throne has always been a place of refuge despite the number of hours she spends there. The wood had been crafted in Soncha’s likeness, or of what Lexa remembered how it felt to run her hand along the smooth, fine bone structure. Upon her ascension, she had provided the artisans with very specific carving instructions that took them several tries to get right. Rustic and weathered but hardy and sturdy all the same. (The softness of Lexa’s ceremonial red sash mimics the velvet cover of the doe’s growing antler before shedding.) 

“Sometimes I think she was a sentient being not of this world sent to keep watch over me. She was my protector,” Lexa says quietly, her mood going somber remembering the harrowing events that followed three summers later. It’s with a dull ache that she reveals, quiet and soft, “My life was spared by hers.”

“Lexa,” Clarke says. Reading the change, she cups her cheek, brushing a thumb gently over the sweep of its apple.

Lexa leans into the touch, soaking in its comfort, before looking to the ceiling for some strength.

“Do you recall the story of how my parents died during a clan war?” On Clarke’s sympathetic nod, Lexa discloses the part that has remained untold, “I was in the forest when it happened, unaware that our village was under attack, that they were being cowardly, ruthlessly slaughtered.” 

Jaw clenching, Lexa’s breathing slows. Her chest tightens.

“There was a commotion near the edge of the forest as we approached the clearing. I wanted to see but Soncha must have sensed something was wrong and quickly steered me away, heading back to where we had just walked. I chased after her but my heavy footfalls had alerted one of the attackers to follow us. It happened fast. I didn’t realise I had caught up to her until she was staring at me, a wild but determined look.” It is one forever etched into her memory. “I reached a hand out which she instantly nuzzled into, but before I could calm her, she lept over me towards the hunter,” Lexa’s voice quivers, “I turned just as an arrow pierced through the air and … and right through her.” 

Lexa subconsciously presses a hand to her chest as if she could feel the phantom pain. Her insides twist replaying the whirring sound that broke in flight, that still haunts her.

“It was meant for me. She saved me,” Lexa says like a whispered confession. She remembers crying out watching Soncha’s majestic form collapse to the forest floor. At the edge of fury and grief, she tells Clarke, she threw her knife—the one Nontu had taught her how to use the spring before—in the direction of the arrow’s origin. The retribution came swift, a clean hit presumably by the wailing sound that erupted in the distance and echoed among the trees. But she didn’t care to check the accuracy of her strike, no regard to further secure her welfare. It mattered little then that the attacker would indeed turn out to be Lexa’s first kill. _She_ was her first death, her first heartbreak. “I owe Soncha my life. I laid with her until son daun so that she would not be alone in her final hour.”

“Oh, Lexa,” Clarke breathes, linking their fingers over her stomach in offer of silent comfort.

“It’s eerie how quiet death is,” Lexa observes. She was no taller than Nomon’s waist at the time. From all the stories she overheard the warriors tell around the fire, Lexa had always assumed death was a loud thing—a crashing violence that she naively could not wait to fight against when she grew to sufficient height. Her Conclave would eventually dispel any such romanticism of gonplei, yet, on that early autumn evening, she was overwhelmed by the silence.

The devastating stillness.

“I found some nearby flowers to make a wreath and blessed Soncha safe passage to where endless pastures may await. I kissed her goodbye on the fur that had become my second bed and then hid in the forest for the rest of the night.”

In hushed tones, she continues her story. Shivering cold and trying to keep her sobs quiet, Lexa waited until daylight. But this time, she did not want tomorrow to come. The next morning, still raw with emotion from losing her best friend, she was completely destroyed upon her return home to find her parents slain near the entrance of their dwelling. Nontu was laying protectively over Nomon much in the same way Soncha had cradled Lexa that first night, much in the same way Lexa had awoken at dawn. Bodies curved in love.

Lexa doesn’t realise she is crying until Clarke is straining to catch the silent tears with her lips.

“Oh, Lex.”

“I take solace that they passed onto the next life together in each other’s arms, but ever since then, it has been one agonising loss after another. Costia, Luna, Anya, Gustus, Lincoln. Aden and the Nightbloods. _Tomorrow_ has been too painful—hopeful—of a word for me.”

Hearing the croak of her voice, Clarke turns around and shuffles awkwardly to straddle her, bracing a knee on either side of Lexa’s hips. Lexa stills, careful to give the room Clarke needs to manoeuvre. She looks up, only for her breath to catch at the sight of the distant glow of moonlight setting her houmon in stunning silhouette. It has been several sonrauns since their first meeting, yet, she is wrecked anew by the beauty before her, a salve for the wounds the memory reopens—a gain for all the losses.

Clarke takes Lexa’s face in her hands. “I’m so sorry, love. I wish I could have been there for you in those early years.”

“You are here now,” Lexa says and kisses the tip of Clarke’s nose, biding time to re-gather her composure. “It wasn’t until you fell out of the sky and landed on the ground, _my_ ground, that I allowed myself to think of tomorrows again.”

Clarke kisses the tremble of her bottom lip, steadying it with a light sucking that holds her affection in place.

“So, no, Clarke,” Lexa tells her with a firm, steady voice that compensates for the slight shake of her hands on Clarke’s hips, “I wish not to give breath to any possibility where you do not exist in my world, where there is a day that you and I are not together.”

“I don’t want that either, but—” Lexa cuts Clarke off with a deeper kiss. More ardent.

With one hand holding the back of Clarke’s neck while the other presses into her lower back to erase the gap between their bodies, the kiss is as intense and consuming as Lexa’s lungs will allow, and long enough for Clarke to grasp the weight of her words.

“That is the only loss of breath I am willing to concede,” she intones with all the seriousness of her station once the kiss ends. “Nami?”

Clarke looks dazed as she licks her lower lip while nodding her understanding. Unfortunately, Lexa’s fiery showing only adds fuel to—rather than puts out—the fire. “We’ve been blessed with years of peace but the stakes are higher now,” Clarke says. All too aware of her fear that their enemies wait to strike while they enjoy domestic bliss, Lexa knows what will come next, “I _cannot_ go through it again.”

They both reflexively look down to the healed scar on Lexa’s stomach. Clarke’s thumb brushes over the raised skin, a habit of feeling it, feeling Lexa, to be reassured of her survival. Her presence.

“I can’t lose you, _this_.” Clarke waves emphatically between them and then to their general surroundings. It is the most well-guarded room in all of Polis, let alone the tower. Lexa’s myriad candles lay unlit, Clarke’s sketches are strewn about, a mix of grounder and Skai items sit on various shelves—Lexa’s books and wood carvings, Clarke’s art and medical supplies. Two cultures and lives perfectly melded together in equally haphazard and deliberate ways.

“You will not. No harm shall come to us within the lands of the thirteen clans. So long as I am Heda, and I am able to raise my sword, you _both_ will be protected.”  
  
Lexa pauses to stare deep into Clarke’s eyes, needing her next words to take deep root.  
  
“So long as my heart beats in two places,” she rests one hand over Clarke’s chest and the other on the swell of her houmon’s stomach where a faint answering kick greets her touch, “you have my word that my every breath, until my last, is dedicated to safeguarding yours and hers.”

“Or his,” Clarke appends, smiling past the wetness of her eyes.

Lexa nods and swallows at the gravity of her promise. She fights her own tears while wiping an errant one running down Clarke’s cheek and remains resolute in her fealty to their growing family. Her promise is an echo of the public one they exchanged some moons ago in front of the Gongeda, all of Polis, and every clansperson that could make the journey to their bonding ceremony; and a version of the private one she had repeatedly vowed as they sealed their love through three consecutive son ops.

“Our fawnling _will_ be protected. You have my word.”

Clarke’s laugh—a melody Lexa never tires—breaks the tense air.

“Float me, I hope I’m not giving birth to a deer. That would be painful with all that headgear.”

They giggle at Clarke’s inadvertent rhyming.

“Though I am indebted to Skai tek that makes a yongon half you and half me possible, I still believe antlers do not grow in the womb, Clarke,” Lexa muses and then scolds, “You are Polis’s top physician, shouldn’t you know such basic anatomy?”

“Well, my medical knowledge wouldn’t be so rusty if I wasn’t still running around putting out diplomatic fires, and getting my ass handed to me by Indra in mortal combat. I think she takes too much pleasure in ‘training’ me.”

“It’s important your skills remain sharp,” Lexa says solemnly but softens at Clarke’s pout. “For my sake and Madeleine or Jakob’s.”

They share a smile at the possible name of their future kin, Lexa’s mother and Clarke’s father were choice finalists narrowed from a shortlist of those that have left behind meaningful footprints. Secretly though, Lexa hopes it would be a girl so she could call their daughter the old world name for high tower. She dares not tell Clarke this who already teases her endlessly for her obsession with cylindrical objects.

“Besides, an active body is an active mind,” Lexa asserts the Trikru motto, happy to see tension starting to lift from Clarke’s shoulders.

“Easy for you to say. You just sit on a throne all day.”

Lexa stifles her amusement at Clarke’s second accidental rhyme.

“My ‘abs’ do not magically appear out of nowhere, Clarke,” she says instead.

Clarke hums but her thoughts appear as yet jumbled when she asks, “What about when you are no longer Heda?”  
  
“You may still ride them.” Lexa’s purposely obtuse reply earns a swat to the area.

“Mockery is not the product of ...” Clarke loses steam to finish the worn refrain when Lexa shifts down on the bed until Clarke’s centre is spread directly over her stomach. Clarke must read the want in Lexa’s eyes—and the clear change of agenda, her intention to make better, productive use of their wakeful time than talking—because she starts a grinding motion without encouragement.

“When I am unable to wear my sash and pull on my pauldron then I will call upon my army of two to protect me.” Lexa rubs Clarke’s belly for emphasis and receives agreement from her little hidden warrior.

“Mhm-hmm,” Clarke answers distractedly while rolling her hips.

“Do these terms suit you, Ambassador?” Lexa teases and begins to massage Clarke’s breast in shared time to the attentive kneading of her belly, “or do we require further negotiations?”  
  
Clarke shakes her head and rocks into Lexa, confirming between shallow breaths, “Um, nope. We’re good. We can table the details for later.”

Lexa wants to laugh but instead her breath hitches feeling Clarke’s wetness coat her skin in search of friction. The slow grinding and the fullness of Lexa’s hands produce a pooling want between her own legs. But ever the dutiful spouse unfailingly prioritising Clarke’s need before her own, she slips a hand between them and earns an approving moan when her fingers brush through Clarke’s folds. 

After an unmetered period of soft stroking, leaving her fingers covered in Clarke’s fluids, Lexa withdraws for a mouthful, sucking on them contently. Perhaps it’s the pregnancy but Lexa is certain the taste gets sweeter, more addictive, each time.

While Lexa savours it, Clarke grows impatient at the loss of contact. She lifts herself up and makes clear where she desires Lexa’s fingers to return.

In the faint light Lexa can see the pink tip poking out from under its hood, baring evidence of Clarke’s growing desperation. Throbbing, begging.

“Fuck, Lex. Beja.”

Weeks since the end of her first trimester, both Clarke’s sex drive and moods have spiked, often leaving Lexa scrambling to accommodate each. Since entering the second term, Clarke’s appetite has often put Lexa literally on her back to keep up. Clarke’s expanding condition is the reason for Lexa’s additional hours on the training grounds and increased fitness and exhaustion level. Tonight, however, after the emotional heaviness of their conversation, she is eager to please her houmon.

She lines her fingers with Clarke’s opening and draws her back down by the hips until she is fully seated and stretched around Lexa. They still for the punch of air to escape both their lungs. Clarke then starts an experimental grind while Lexa pumps slowly into the inviting warmth.

“The fyucha is okay?” Lexa can’t help but inquire about the welfare of their baby despite her dwindling restraint not to speed up and intensify her thrusting.

“They’re fine,” Clarke rushes out and takes it upon herself to pick up the tempo in show, moving up and down at a pace that has Lexa’s throat drying and her heart rate accelerating.

Concern for her heart worsens when Clarke leans back resting on one hand and is able to stroke between Lexa’s legs from behind with the other. They each cry out in pleasure when Clarke pushes past her entrance and Lexa’s thumb brushes against Clarke’s clit in surprised reaction.

It becomes a mad race to draw moans and curses, in either language, out of the other.

Lexa palms Clarke’s breast more urgently feeling the simultaneous build of their orgasm as they push and pull and curl around each other. Warm and slick, the sensation coils tightly in her stomach. It’s a stirring sight—and a strained effort not to come early—watching Clarke chase her pleasure, bucking against Lexa’s hand in mounting desperation.

The noises emanating from their bed have taken on a pitch that would have Lexa self-conscious about the proximity of her guards in front of their doors; but thoughts of propriety are forsaken for the way Clarke’s interspersed chant of “Heda” and “Lexa” tumbles forth brokenly as Lexa succeeds in repeatedly hitting her back walls, earning deep, guttural moans. Lexa has wielded tremendous power for the breadth of her life but none more so desirable or with the same depth than when her name falls from Clarke’s tongue at the height of their physical and emotional connection.

The room spins with the panting rhythm of slapping skin and beggared breaths as Lexa thrusts into Clarke and taps into unknown strength to keep up with her skaifaya’s burning need. When she feels the cliff’s edge nearing, Lexa sits up and wraps her lips around Clarke’s breast. She sucks on Clarke’s nipple, more sensitive than ever, in a manner she knows will have her keening soon.

Lexa is as much undone by having Clarke enveloping her fingers and in her mouth as having Clarke inside of her. They move feverishly together in the final climb, careening towards shared ecstasy.

The hoarse cry of her name is Lexa’s sole warning before Clarke stiffens and then is spilling into Lexa’s hand. Her erratic movements cause Lexa to reach and topple over her own precipice a second behind.

Clarke kisses her as they wait out the shuddering aftershocks, gentle and unhurried, sighing into the soft comfort post their sweated effort. The protrusion between them where their lower bodies meet renders this act more intimate than usual. Lexa tenderly smoothes an affectionate hand over it, in awe of the life that beats under her touch. 

Eventually she untangles Clarke from her hold but before any protest could be registered she carefully flips their positions to lay Clarke on her back. Lexa then moves down her body between her legs, kissing her way inside, savouring the stickiness she finds.  
  
Intent on cleaning the mess she helped create as much as on soaking up Clarke’s spent arousal, Lexa’s lips travel closer to the join of her thighs, sending shivers through them both when Lexa’s nose accidentally grazes her clit as she takes in the heady scent.

The first swipe of her tongue nearly has Clarke lifting off their bed. Lexa holds her down on the second lick, then takes her time to work through the folds.

Lexa knows she’s being greedy but the pull of Clarke’s afterglow is too strong for her not to slip inside. It isn’t until a hand is gripping her hair and tugging her closer for her tongue to go deeper that she realises her sidetracking has Clarke’s second orgasm in sight.

When she feels Clarke’s walls begin to contract, Lexa replaces her tongue with fingers so she can suck on her clit; all the while unaware that her other hand is still stroking Clarke’s roundness. Clarke is practically rutting against Lexa’s face by now but holds out long enough as Lexa redoubles her effort to have her intensely coming moments later.

This time, Lexa is certain all of Polis heard her title being called.

She remains immobile for a while after Clarke’s release, rooted in place by the quiet happiness and the most profound joy that washes over her, Clarke’s syncopated breathing her tether to the ground.

Her life has been an arduous journey fraught with difficult choices, often a false one between love and war, but Lexa has in recent years come to understand that the magnitude of one does not outvalue the immensity of the other. She carries the mantle of Clarke’s happiness and her own with the same weight of responsibility as an entire civilisation on her back. The pursuit of the former amplifies, rather than negates, the purpose of the latter.

As she looks up, seeing the flush of pink of Clarke’s cheeks just beyond the swell of where their future lies between them, an inexorable truth crystallises for Lexa. Her fight has never been over land or ledgers, not even honour or home; since that early morning, after the loss of Soncha, she has always fought for another day. For light to arrive. For a tomorrow to come.

On her extended silence, Clarke lifts her head and props herself up on shaky elbows to softly beckon, “C’mere.”

As curious blue eyes stare at her, expectant, Lexa imagines a second set will soon join them. Adoring, full of life. She finally sees what Clarke had observed from space. The horizon isn’t a straight line at all. It is a curve, pregnant with meaning.

“Ai hod yu in, oitaim, Clarke, ai orizen.”

“I love you too, Leksa.”

Lexa rises to place a tender kiss on Clarke’s belly, “Seintaim, ai strik soncha,” before moving up her body and resettling to lie with her front to Clarke’s back.

When sleep at last arrives, her hand protectively wraps over her family.

“Reshop, hodnes. Tomorrow awaits us.”

  
  
  


**—**

TRANSLATIONS

_Skaifaya_ — star  
 _Niron, beja._ — Love, please.  
 _son op_ — morning  
 _branwoda_ — foolish  
 _sonraun_ — year  
 _Orizen_ — Horizon  
 _Ogonzaun Treaty_ — Peace Treaty  
 _goufa, yongon_ — child  
 _soncha_ — light  
 _houmon_ — spouse  
 _Nami?_ — Understand?  
 _fyucha_ — baby  
 _Ai hod yu in, oitaim, Clarke, ai orizen._ — I love you, always, Clarke, my horizon.  
 _Seintaim, ai strik soncha._ — You too, my little light.  
 _Reshop, hodnes._ — Goodnight, love.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Canon is not my wheelhouse (hence the dust collection), but this is my canonish version of how things worked out between Clarke and Lexa. It can also be read as a prequel to [**this**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21810883/chapters/52047661). I firmly believe, in another life, Lexa would be a librarian or an archivist (or a fanfic writer). Stay safe, stay sane friends :)


End file.
